SittingNow teases New Show
So we finally took the plunge – after a year of planning and debate – and announced our new SittingNow TV show. The show will initially be available on the site, and via online distros like iTunes, YouTube, and Vimeo, and then later will appear on a channel to be announced later in the year (confusing I know).
Anyway, check out this ‘teaser’ intro, and let us know what you think!
James Brown’s Body Missing?
Apparently, James Brown’s numerous other children are claiming that this story is bogus. I’ll post updates as they come across the wire.
From NME.com:
James Brown’s body has been stolen, according to his reported love child LaRhonda Pettit.
The soul legend’s body was put in a crypt after his death on Christmas Day in 2006. Since then it has been kept at his daughter Deanna’s house in South Carolina while a public mausoleum was being prepared.
Pettit has now claimed the body has gone missing. Consequently, she says she is being denied the opportunity to carry out an autopsy to determine Brown’s true cause of death, reports the Daily Mirror.
“My daddy’s body has disappeared. I have no clue where it was taken, but I need to know where,” Pettit explained.
She added: “I’m convinced his…
Theodore Roosevelt – Monster Hunter?
The Bull-Moose is the first person I would choose for my early 20th century Tennessee monster hunt!
From the Examiner:
The year is 1918 and some thing is stalking the woods around Knoxville, Tennessee.
The mysterious beast is killing farm animals – hogs and calves and the occasional hunting dog – and residents are afraid to leave the house at night. Children are kept home from school. Local efforts to stop the beast have failed so desperate residents make a plea to America’s foremost outdoorsman and big game hunter to come to their aid.
President Theodore Roosevelt.
The former president’s glory days were behind him at this point in his life. His health was poor. He was sixty and suffered from severe rheumatism and carried a bullet in his chest from a failed assassination attempt in…
‘Bottled Ghosts’ Sold in New Zealand Auction
Via BBC News:
Two glass phials said to contain the ghosts of an old man and a young girl have sold for NZ $2,000 (U.S. $1,395 / £935) in an online auction in New Zealand. The auction attracted more than 200,000 page views on the Trade Me website.
Avie Woodbury said the ghosts had been captured in her Christchurch house by an exorcist and stored in holy water. The top bidder, an electronic cigarette company, said it was looking for ideas on what to do with the ghosts.
Ms Woodbury told bidders she had experienced “bizarre activity” in her home.
“I would get things like the jug boiling itself, touching on the back of my neck, voices from other rooms, and items going missing then turning up in weird places,” she said.
Woman’s Growth of a 6 centimeter Horn on Forehead Baffles Village
MSN reports:
A woman has alarmed her small village in China after growing a 6cm horn on her forehead in less than a year.
Zhang Ruifang, 101, says she is also concerned about the appearance of a second mark on the other side of her forehead.
“We didn’t pay too much attention to it [at first] … but as time went on a horn grew out of her head,” said Mrs Zhang’s son Zhang Guozheng.
Denver UFO Ballot Initiative Adopts Hip-Hop Anthem
From the Denver Post:
It is not every ballot initiative that has its own hip-hop song.
But then, how many times are voters asked to approve formation of a commission to study visitors from outer space?
Jeff Peckman, director of the extraterrestrial affairs commission ballot initiative, will launch a campaign to educate voters about his proposal this evening at 7 P.M. at the Jefferson County Fairgrounds.
Peckman collected signatures to have the measure placed on Denver’s Aug. 10 ballot. If it passes, the City of Denver will be required to create a seven-member commission tasked with collecting evidence that extraterrestrials and UFOs have been visiting Earth.
“Pink UFO,” a song by Chris Steele, of the hip-hop duo Calm, wrote and performs “Pink UFO,” which will be replayed at tonight’s event. The song, which is dedicated…
Australian Town Hit by Raining Fish
Now this is biblical, but it does happen from time to time. Check out the video below from the BBC documentary series Supernatural which explains the phenomenon. Simon Crisp writes on Asylum:
For residents of a small Australian town, their usually mundane conversations about the weather have just become a whole lot more interesting.
That’s because in the outback town of Lajamanu it’s started raining fish. Yes, fish. Hundreds of them, falling from the sky. Over the past two days the town’s 660 residents have been bombarded with small white fish which have been falling like rain.
Locals say the fish, mostly spangled perch, have even been alive as they hit the floor. Lucky it wasn’t crocodiles then. Meteorologists believe the fish where sucked up by a tornado — which passed over a river some 300 miles away — before being carried through the sky at 40,000 to 50,000 feet.
The Man Who Found the Holy Grail
From Fortean Times:
According to the New Catholic Dictionary the Holy Grail is “a legendary sacred vessel, identified with the chalice of the Eucharist or the dish of the Paschal Lamb, and the theme of a medieval cycle of romance”. It “is said to have been the dish… used by Joseph of Arimathea to gather the Precious Blood of Christ.” And, according to author, historian and folklorist Mark Oxbrow, the Grail has actually been found.
Of course, the Grail was once in the hands of Indiana Jones, but even he ultimately lost it; so what makes Oxbrow’s claims special? Why should we believe him when we already have several Grails, including the Nantios Cup, the “Holy Bloodline” of Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln’s The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail and the Stone Tablets…
A ‘Nobel Torsion Message’ Over Norway?
Richard C. Hoagland writes on Enterprise Mission:
The scientific evidence behind this growing set of suspicions — that the Spiral somehow caused the Russian missile to fail — lies in the extraordinary geometric structure that Enterprise has discovered within the too-perfect, too-concentric “shell-like rings” … making up the Spiral — A key part of this “impossible” geometry consisted of four, exactly 90-degree darkened “reticle-like” divisions of the Spiral … precisely separating it into four radiating quadrants ….
Geometric behavior simply inconceivable for any “randomly rotating … fuel-spewing third-stage rocket ….” This “too-too-regular-geometry …” can only be explained by the presence of —
Some kind of energy-induced, standing-wave-pattern in the Spiral …. Creating — Narrow, uniform-width concentric striations … ordered in an underlying medium (the leaking third-stage fuel?) by an external “forcing 3-D energy pattern” —
Then, it hit me: “Chladni Figures!”
Canada Promises Landing Strip for UFOs
From CBC News:
Defence Minister Peter MacKay said Friday that he doesn’t know what people in southern Newfoundland saw recently but he promised the federal government does have plans to help them.
“We will provide money to build a landing strip for UFOs at Harbour Mille,” said MacKay, speaking in St. John’s to announce federal funding for road construction in the province.
“No, I’m only kidding. I’m joking. That’s a joke.” Jokes aside, MacKay said there’s no need to worry about the unidentified flying object. “We’ve checked with other countries and we’ll continue to do so but I don’t think it is any cause for panic,” said MacKay.
A model plane flier said an earlier a comment from the Prime Minister’s Office about a mysterious object spotted near Harbour Mille is laughable. Thursday, a…
How to Fall 35,000 Feet — And Survive
Dan Koeppel writes in Popular Mechanics:
You’re six miles up, alone and falling without a parachute. Though the odds are long, a small number of people have found themselves in similar situations — and lived to tell the tale.
6:59:00 AM, 35,000 Feet: You have a late night and an early flight. Not long after takeoff, you drift to sleep. Suddenly, you’re wide awake. There’s cold air rushing everywhere, and sound. Intense, horrible sound. Where am I?, you think. Where’s the plane?
You’re 6 miles up. You’re alone. You’re falling.
Things are bad. But now’s the time to focus on the good news. (Yes, it goes beyond surviving the destruction of your aircraft.) Although gravity is against you, another force is working in your favor: time. Believe it or not, you’re better off up…
Landlords Want Office-Crashing Meteorite
What would you do with a meteorite if it crashed into your office? Sell it? Make a dragon-slaying sword with a black blade? The doctors in the story resisted the temptation to do any of these things, and decided to donate their meteorite to the Smithsonian so everyone could see evidence of the strangest day at the office in American history. Just when you though this fortean tale had a happy ending, enter the evil landlord….
From UPI:
A meteorite that dropped into a Virginia doctors’ office is now at the center of an ownership battle between the doctors and their landlords.Dr. Marc Gallini and Dr. Frank Ciampi said they were in the process of donating the small meteorite that crashed into their Lorton office Jan. 18 to the Smithsonian’s National Museum…
The Myth of the Sony ‘Kill Switch’
From The Telegraph:
For nearly 20 years Sony in Japan has been plagued by the myth of the “Sony Timer” – but is there really a kill-switch that destroys your device just after its warranty runs out? Many Japanese genuinely believe that there is.
It was the recall of more than 4.1 million Dell laptops containing faulty Sony batteries in 2006 that jump-started a rumour that has been around for decades. From 1980 to 2006 geeks and tech-obsessed Japanese had joked about the existence of the timer, creating sarcastic manga and venting anger through online forums. But the Dell recall launched the urban legend into the public eye and angry Sony sufferers jumped at the chance to denounce the company.
The mass spontaneous combustion of those batteries damaged Sony’s reputation in Japan enormously.…
New Chupacabra Revealed as a Montauk Monster
From LiveScience:
Workers at a golf course in Runaway Bay, an hour north of Fort Worth, Texas, recently found what they thought might be the carcass of the vampire beast “el chupacabra.” The strange dog-like animal was mostly hairless, with tan-brown skin. It didn’t look like anything the men had ever seen before. Was it the legendary goat-sucker, the bloodthirsty Hispanic version of Bigfoot?
As it turns out, no. Jennifer Barrow, a biologist with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, examined the carcass and noted that the teeth, skull, and feet all matched a raccoon. It’s not clear why the animal lost its fur, though there are several diseases that can cause hair loss.
This is not the first time that a hairless raccoon has been (initially) misidentified as a monster. The so-called…
Moscow’s Stray Dogs Evolving Greater Intelligence, Including a Mastery of the Subway
From PopSci:
For every 300 Muscovites, there’s a stray dog wandering the streets of Russia’s capital. And according to Andrei Poyarkov, a researcher at the A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution, the fierce pressure of urban living has driven the dogs to evolve wolf-like traits, increased intelligence, and even the ability to navigate the subway.
Poyarkov has studied the dogs, which number about 35,000, for the last 30 years. Over that time, he observed the stray dog population lose the spotted coats, wagging tails, and friendliness that separate dogs from wolves, while at the same time evolving social structures and behaviors optimized to four ecological niches occupied by what Poyarkov calls guard dogs, scavengers, wild dogs, and beggars.
The guard dogs follow around, and receive food from, the security personnel at Moscow’s many…
Sharks, Zombies, Weird Clouds: The Most Popular Stories of 2009
From Wired:
This has been Wired Science’s most successful year, by far. We like to think this is the result of a combination of your excellent taste and our efforts to learn what you like to read.
//
We have often joked that the perfect Wired Science story is about robot sharks with lasers in space. While we haven’t gotten a chance to write that one just yet, looking at this list of our most popular stories of the year, we’ve come pretty close. Golden-silk-spinning spiders, the mathematics of zombies and weird clouds were all among your favorites.
10. Mysterious, Glowing Clouds Appear Across America’s Night Skies
Speaking of weird clouds, number 10 on our 2009 hit list is the mysterious appearance of noctilucent clouds in the night skies over the United States and Europe.…
The 9 Strangest News Stories of 2009
From LiveScience.com:
Weirdness takes many forms, and 2009 had its share of weird events. Here’s a look back at the strangest news stories of the year drawn from the realms of pseudoscience, the paranormal, media hype, outright lies and the just plain strange.
9. Trailcam Transforms Hiker into Bigfoot
When some hunters set up a camera to record wildlife in the Minnesota woods, they accidentally photographed a hiker or hunter on a trail. A few local Bigfoot buffs concluded that the dark figure was probably Bigfoot, much to the embarrassment of other Bigfoot researchers who claimed it was just a guy in a dark outfit—unlike the famous 1967 image of Bigfoot, which couldn’t possibly be a guy in a dark outfit.
8. Turin Shroud Duplicated
A team of Italian scientists duplicated the Shroud of Turin,…
Cattle Mutilations Baffle Colorado Ranchers
From the LA Times:
Reporting from Denver – Manuel A. Sanchez has ruled out every logical explanation for the fate that has befallen the calves on his ranch in southern Colorado.
Over the past month, he’s found four calves dead in a way that he cannot reconcile with anything in his 50 years of raising cattle: eyes and ears missing, tongues and genitals excised in what appeared to be a series of fine cuts.
Mountain lions, bears or coyotes would leave messier marks, he said. And Sanchez found no tire tracks or footprints that would suggest a human invader — nor even bloodstains he’d expect to find around the carcasses if someone had butchered them.
“There’s nothing to go by,” said Sanchez, who estimated his financial loss at $10,000. “I can’t figure it out.”
Costilla…
Ancient Amazon Civilisation Laid Bare by Felled Forest
From NewScientist:
Signs of what could be a previously unknown ancient civilisation are emerging from beneath the felled trees of the Amazon. Some 260 giant avenues, ditches and enclosures have been spotted from the air in a region straddling Brazil’s border with Bolivia.
The traditional view is that before the arrival of the Spanish and Portuguese in the 15th century there were no complex societies in the Amazon basin – in contrast to the Andes further west where the Incas built their cities. Now deforestation, increased air travel and satellite imagery are telling a different story.
“It’s never-ending,” says Denise Schaan of the Federal University of Pará in Belém, Brazil, who made many of the new discoveries from planes or by examining Google Earth images. “Every week we find new structures.” Some of them…
